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BIOETHICS BOOM TheStar.com - Ideas - Battles lines being drawn for new war over stem cells Battles lines being drawn for new war over stem cells With restrictions in countries such as the U.S., Germany and Australia nearing an end, research floodgates seem set to spring open and with them a whole new set of quandaries for patients and doctors Aug 25, 2007 04:30 AM Stuart Laidlaw Faith and Ethics Reporter Clashes between the high-tech and the holy are looming anew as political changes force stem-cell research back onto the public agenda, raising a host of new bioethical concerns for doctors and patients. And a Toronto physician is going to have his say about where this all leads. The medical world needs to think about more than just curing diseases and prescribing drugs, says Dr. Bill Sullivan, who has been tapped to advise the Vatican on bioethics, and consider more where those cures come from. "You can fix the kidney, but the person might not be healed in other ways," continues Sullivan, appointed earlier this month by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Academy for Life. True care needs also to address the ethical issues surrounding their care - including the research done to arrive at a treatment. For Sullivan, medical decisions cannot, and should not, be made in a moral vacuum. For the Catholic church, embryonic stem-cell research tops the list of concerns. "The ethical issues arise where the vulnerable are threatened," Sullivan says, referring to the stem cells destroyed in labs. He expects such research to get a boost in the coming years as the Bush administration comes to an end, taking with it the White House ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The U.S. Congress tried again this year to pass a bill allowing such funding, only to see President George Bush veto it in June. The veto was expected, but the attempt by Congress nonetheless sent a clear message that the rest of Washington supports the work. Meanwhile, moratoriums restricting stem-cell research in other countries, such as Germany and Australia, are nearing an end, scientific journals are calling for more stem-cell and other research, and Democratic presidential candidates are letting it be known they support the work. In short, the floodgates of medical and biotechnological research seem about to spring open and with them a whole host of new bioethical concerns. Shane Green, director of ethics for the Ontario Genome Institute, says new discoveries are being made all the time, even with the Bush ban in place, expanding the ethical questions on a constant basis. Embryonic stem-cell research is already allowed in this country, he points out, and funded by all levels of government. Green says the scientific community takes ethics seriously, realizing that without the public's buy in, their work could be threatened. In fact, to get genome institute funding, researchers must show how they will address the ethical, environmental and legal issues surrounding their work. And the International Society for Stem Cell Research is planning a global forum within the next year on the ethical challenges of their own work. Such work is needed, bioethicists agree, because with each new discovery another choice must be made about how, and when, to use it. "You don't have to go along with every technological cure, just because it's there," says Moira McQueen, who replaced Sullivan as head of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute, which he founded. McQueen is quick to say she is no enemy of medical advances. In fact, she underwent chemotherapy a few years ago to successfully fight breast cancer. That doesn't mean, however, that she would do it again if the cancer came back. "Would I do it again? I don't know. It would depend on the situation at the time," she says, adding she would have to balance prolonging her life with the quality of that life. It's the kind of choice more people will face as medical researchers and scientists make new discoveries and expand the options open to patients in the coming years. In his work with the Vatican, Sullivan hopes to help both doctors and patients navigate these tricky waters. For the Catholic Church, which considers all human life to have value and dignity, one of the primary concerns has been protection of the embryo - a hot topic in stem-cell research. Embryonic stem-cell research ends up destroying the embryo, which is why the White House under Bush has refused to fund the work and why the Catholic Church is also opposed. Green at the genome institute points out, however, that the embryos used in stem-cell research would have been destroyed anyway. After a woman goes through in vitro fertilization, some embryos always remain, either to be destroyed, frozen indefinitely or donated for medical research. No embryos are created simply for research purposes, he says, pointing out that this is illegal in Canada. Opponents of embryonic stem-cell research have called for more work to be done with adult stem cells, which can be donated from living donors. Green counters that it is only with embryonic cells, which can develop into any organ in the body, that scientists can fully understand how all stem cells work. "Adult stem cells are more limited," he says. It is these sorts of issues, coupled with seemingly endless announcements of new medical discoveries, that keep the ethicists busy. Sullivan, for instance, will be meeting with other members of the Vatican academy in the fall to go over the newest research and the latest ethical debates. Besides the ISSCR forum, there will be other ethics conferences organized, including one that McQueen is putting together in October. McQueen says it is vital that doctors and ethicists keep up with not only the arguments for or against a treatment or field of research, but the science behind it. It is one more area, she says, where science and good ethics advance hand-in-hand. "Your ethics are only as good as the facts you base them on." Rayilyn Brown Board Member AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn